FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT GARTH DRABINSKY - PAGE 5

"Aspects of Love," Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical inspired by David Garnett's 1955 novella, will get its Chicago premiere via a Canadian production April 23 at the Civic Theatre, 20 N. Wacker Drive. Previews of the play about a quintet of characters and their romantic escapades in glamorous settings throughout postwar Europe begin April 21. The 1989 musical, with lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart, is still running on London's West End, but suffered a disappointingly brief Broadway engagement in 1990.

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" exuberantly sailed into the Chicago Theatre Sunday night, riding on an astounding wave of song, story, sound and spectacle. Here, with one show-stopping number after another, is an all-out celebration of the seminal Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, painted in the bright, glowing tints of a child's storybook and embellished with every stage trick imaginable to make it a super extravaganza. There are elements of opera, ballet, Broadway, Las Vegas, Sunday school and Saturday night hoedown in this bounteously produced show, but, surprisingly, they all come together in one witty, happy stream of entertainment to the max. At the center of this brilliantly arranged pastiche is Donny Osmond, who, like the production that surrounds him, is full of surprises.

Though inevitably overshadowed by Monday night's Oscar ceremonies in Los Angeles, the British and Canadian film academies both annouced their awards last week. The big winner in Britain was "A Room with a View," which, after receiving a record-breaking 14 nominations, took the awards for best film, best actress (Maggie Smith), best supporting actress (Judi Dench), best costume design and best production. Bob Hoskins added another honor to his long list of citations for his performance as a golden-hearted hoodlum in "Mona Lisa," while Scottish performer Ray McAnally took home the best supporting actor award for his appearance as the papal emissary in "The Mission."

Anew, 1,500-seat theater for music and dance. A new Goodman Theatre and a restored Oriental Theatre. An expanded and modernized Civic Opera House and a radically redesigned headquarters for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All this could happen. But not yet, and not all for sure. In the meantime, a progress report on several building projects in the performing arts. - Chicago Music and Dance Theater: If an acceptable bid comes in for the construction work, if a workable plan for financing is hammered out and if most of the 12 resident troupes expected to use the auditorium officially sign on, ground should be broken for the building at Cityfront Center by the end of autumn.

Fifteen years ago, when downtown's Oriental Theater went dark, it looked like the old vaudeville palace turned B-movie house had taken its last curtain call. Almost hidden inside a crusty office building on the north side of Randolph Street west of the State Street Mall, the Oriental's opulent baroque interior was not on the list of landmarks to be preserved under the city's North Loop urban-renewal project. City planners said they wanted a new office building there. Fortunately, as things turn out, several false starts in the North Loop and the ensuing weakness of the commercial office market combined to give this tarnished gem a welcome reprieve.

We are used to great theaters in Chicago. Two of the grandest houses in the United States, the Auditorium and the Chicago, are here in our downtown, happily preserved, restored and in use, their opulence awing new generations of customers. This season on Broadway, New York theatergoers are receiving a similar thrill when they enter two recently opened theaters -- the New Amsterdam and the Ford Center for the Performing Arts -- that are part of the ongoing restructuring and revitalization of 42nd Street.

Secretary of State George Ryan told INC. he'll write a letter to Wisconsin authorities to "relentlessly, and I mean relentlessly, pursue" the source of alcohol for the driver involved in a crash near Kenosha that killed a Chicago family of four. An 18-year-old Lake Villa man, Randy Bresnahan, has been charged with four counts of homicide. Police said his blood-alcohol count was .11, over the .10 legal limit. "For someone to be on the streets like that is intolerable," Ryan said. The secretary's staffers note there is proposed Illinois legislation by state Rep. Tom Dart, a Chicago Democrat, that would "raise the cap" on liability in drunken-driving cases.

Microsoft guru--and current Newsweek cover boy--Bill Gates popped into U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin's office in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Gates, scheduled for a Tuesday appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chatted it up and spent a few minutes helping Durbin re-configure his software. All it took was a few clicks of the mouse. But the Illinois legislator, a member of the committee, touched both sides in the Computer Wars. Netscape's Jim Barksdale, one of Gates' rivals who also will testify, was another Monday visitor.

Chicago composer Joseph Daniel Sobol savors the good news: "In the Deep Heart's Core," a play based on the poetry of William Butler Yeats that he adapted to music, is headed to the Smithsonian for a performance before a month's run at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va. "Deep Heart," produced here by Bailiwick Repertory, won a Jefferson citation for original music in '95. It's a play that Sobol has nurtured for a dozen years. Its draw? "This is some of the greatest poetry in the English language," Sobol tells us, "and (the audience)

A group of community activists is taking on City Hall and a Canadian theater mogul in an effort to save the landmark Oliver Building. Members of the Committee to Save Chicago Landmarks say a proposal to gut the 91-year-old building in the North Loop to clear way for redevelopment of the Oriental Theater runs counter to the very idea of landmark status. "To destroy an architectural and historic treasure of our city, state and nation to accommodate a for-profit foreign corporation is a travesty," committee co-chair Maria Vargas said Tuesday at a press conference in front of the building at 159 N. Dearborn St., most recently the site of Tommy's Chicago Bar and Grill.